Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Star Wars HoTT at the EWG

We had eight guys out at the club last night with two games running. Dave and Scott played a Tomb Kings v. Vampire Count undead throwdown with WHFB. Turned out to be a real throw down as Scott fumbled a skeleton late in the game and ended up stepping on it.

We were joined by the GW Finecast Project Team. Oh, no, wait. These are some of Dave's Mantic zombies, marching to destroy Scott's GW army using the Lore of Competitive Pricing and Alternative Game Engine.

You can see the disarray on the GW side, with half-heartened deployment and troops holed up in their tower.

Chen, Barry, Terry and I played two games of HoTT Star Wars. For this first outing of "my daughter's Star Wars armies", I simply assigned each base a unit type, rather than using the Star Wars adaptation on the web. I may give this a go at a later date.

There were two rebel armies, each with 14-16 AP and throwing 1d4 for pips against a single imperial army (24 AP, 1d6 pips). It was a straight up encounter with no stronghold.

The first game saw the Imperials deploy on either side of the river, attempting to get good match-ups (e.g., AT-AT on Warband). In the foreground, Chen's wookie command would eventually destroy both of these Dewbacks as well as the AT-AT walker. In the background, Terry's rebel troopers would hold the imperials and eventually work a speeder flight around behind for some flanking attacks.

In game two, the Imperials deployed on one side of the river, requiring the wookie command to cross it. Barry made haste but found that his access to the other side at the ford was blocked by a big smack down between Chen's rebel troopers and Terry's stormtroopers. Barry then spent a frustrating 20 minutes trying to wade the river and join the fight.

Terry was able to defeat each of the rebel armies separately, although you can see a unit of speeders worked its way around behind him, flew through the gauntlet of shooters and flank the AT-AT (which was killed).

Brave Luke Skywalker, hero general, spent much of the game in the forest, trying not to get greased by the large number of troopers headed his way. When his army finally bugged out, he left the poor wookies to finish crossing the river and take on the might of the imperial army themselves.

An extended see-saw battle allowed Barry to bring more wookies into the fray than we'd though, but eventually his general unit (Han, Chewie, Leia and Luke) were trapped and destroyed, bringing the second game to an end. Overall, a reasonably fun pair of games. Next time we'll try the shooter-heavy adaptation I found online.

Up next: Some War of 1812 British troops are awaiting basing. And I have some War of 1812 American units to finish and then I think I am done that project! I also have the remaining 28mm Normans primered and awaiting paint.